Open your baskets…
It’s the second week in August, and I can feel my pulse quickening, especially when I recall what this time of year once meant to me: the start of another school year. In my youth this feeling didn’t really hit me until right before Labor Day, then the almost universal beginning of school. But since our calendar shifted from agrarian cycles to those dictated by fall sports’ seasons, August has lost its claim on late summer vacations. So here we are, ready to send our children and teens, masked and unmasked, into those halls that now seem more hallowed and welcoming after a year’s quarantine rendered them off-limits to so many.
For school administrators, the weeks leading up to school are fraught with all kinds of last-minute preoccupations, from scheduling and readying the campus, to bringing this year’s faculty up to speed. I must admit that, as a school headmaster, I looked forward to the days immediately before the start of classes, particularly to those occasions when I could share my dreams and aspirations for the coming year with my colleagues. As in most of our endeavors for which great outcomes are expected, preparation and planning are the keys to ensuring success. There is much to organize, coordinate and clarify if the school has any hope of getting off to a good start and sustaining that energy over the ten months that lay ahead.
In order to set a positive tone and offer some inspiration to fellow educators transitioning from their summers of travel, recreation, reflection or inactivity, I liked to remind them of the important work they were about to resume as teachers. And what better way to get them thinking than for me to put a metaphorical cast on the important work that was calling us all back into pedagogical fellowship? One that hit home with my team of professional educators was my comparison of school—teaching in particular—with a TV show that has been around since 2009: Chopped.
Teachers, directors of musical or theatrical programs, and athletic coaches all closely resemble the contestants featured in this reality-TV program. Its premise is simple and intriguing: what can trained chefs make with a mix of unusual and seemingly incompatible ingredients that turns out to be both edible and delicious? Four chefs compete with each other to see who can survive the critical judgment of three world-renowned culinary experts who watch them work, eat their creations, and critique their efforts. It is a most fascinating and stress-filled survival-of-the-fittest contest. At the end of the hour one chef is left standing to claim the prize, the other three having been excused or “chopped” from the competition.
The more I watch episodes of this show, the more I realize how much teachers and Chopped contestants have in common. Like the chefs who compete, teachers are drawn to their vocation by a passion that fuels both their interest in this life-changing pursuit and their commitment to improving themselves so they may better serve their students. Master teachers, like master chefs, spend a lifetime learning their trade and perfecting those talents that bring them, and those for whom they work (customers and students), so much gratification.
As in the Chopped kitchen, teachers work in laboratories with supplies with which they are quite familiar. Knives, spatulas, whisks, pots and pans; pencils, paper, word processors, black and white boards, and AVs that improve each year. These are the tools of the trade upon which chefs and educators rely. You don’t have to watch many episodes of Chopped to see how often something doesn’t work as expected. Ovens may not heat as quickly as desired, the ice cream machine squirts out pudding instead of hardened ice cream. Murphy’s law is not restricted to kitchens, however, as teachers well know. The really good ones keep one or more “plan Bs” in their back pocket, especially useful in this era of technological dependency where glitches, internet pauses and crashes can happen at the most inopportune times. Master teachers, like master chefs, must be able to adapt to circumstances that may and can change our plans—ensuring that the show may go on.
Perhaps the truest comparison between Chopped and the classroom is that neither the competing chefs nor the teachers now assembling for faculty in-service training get to choose the ingredients with which they will be asked to work. The contents in Chopped baskets rarely make sense to the experienced cook. Fish heads, dried fermented scallops, chicken feet, scrapple, bitter melon, lotus root, and cactus pears—the list of off-the-wall foods they are given boggles the mind. Yet master chefs somehow find a way work with them, creating dishes that bring out their flavors in culinary concoctions that the judges can stomach, and usually enjoy. This August teachers, directors and coaches across our nation are discovering that the “basket” they’ve been given this year contains some unexpected student ingredients on their class rosters: difficult personalities, wavering attention spans, modest abilities and behavioral challenges that they neither anticipated nor hoped to receive. Yet like master chefs, they will marshal all of their creativity, skill and perseverance to help each of their students-—the easy ones as well as the difficult ones—bring out their unique flavor in contributing to the success of their classes, their teams, and their performing ensembles.
At the end of each round of competition, Chopped judges render their verdict on how well the contestants have used what they were given in trying to create a gastronomic masterpiece. It is here that the culinary knowledge and creativity of each chef, their ability to manage time under stress and their capacity to adjust to the many unforeseen obstacles encountered along the way are evaluated. Only one in four who step into the Chopped kitchen emerges as the winner. Every day, during every marking period, after every athletic contest, concert, or play, parents, students and colleagues render their verdict on how well their teachers, coaches and directors have used what they were given to inspire a tour de force performance from their students. It is here that the knowledge, creativity, compassion, patience and wisdom of each teacher, as well as their ability to manage a job too big for the time allotted—complete with unforeseen obstacles encountered along the way—are evaluated. In my experience as a teacher and as a teacher evaluator, the vast majority of those who are brave enough to enter this most honorable and important vocation, emerge as winners.
In the final analysis, Chopped contestants and teachers are judged by what they are able to produce from the baskets they are given and the classes they are assigned. Nothing about Chopped or education is ideal or fully under the control of those most responsible for the success of their efforts. Many wilt under the pressure or struggle in making something with ingredients not to their liking or of their choosing. But the great ones, those who are genuine difference-makers in their craft, rise to the challenge, adapt, persevere and triumph. The life of a master teacher is not easy, nor is it for everyone. Yet its lasting impact on students, their families, and the communities who will ultimately benefit from their education cannot be measured, nor adequately acknowledged or rewarded.
During this second week of August school bells are starting to sound, buses are on the move, and backpacks are stuffed with books, calculators, iPads, and lunches. A new academic year has launched, much to the delight of students and their parents. Awaiting them are teachers who, once again, are opening their classroom baskets that will invariably contain both the familiar and the unexpected—those who will be easy to teach and others who will try and test their creativity, patience, energy and endurance. But at the end of the day—s0metime next May in all likelihood-- these same teachers will realize, as will many of their parents and even some of their students--how unforgettable and worthwhile this has all been.
Time starts—now.
